Previously: Teri Hatcher is evil.
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Marines: Supergirl flies to the DEO and lands with a loud speech about how ready she is to kick ass, take names, and do it all with an endearing smile on her face. Hank J’onn says that’s cool because there is literally nothing for her to do. No one is committing crime. Hank J’onn, Winn and Alex all have other things they can do (budgets! code breaking! knife practice!), but Kara has nothing.
Samantha: Doesn’t she also have a day job? A whole other skill set, just like everyone else? Was she fired? It’s possible I’ve forgotten something.
Mari: Lol, she was definitely fired.
We cut to the Super Pad where Kara is trying to cook but keeps messing up a recipe. She’s thankfully distracted by a knock on her door. It’s Lena, who quickly calls Kara out on her grief baking, and then cuts to the chase of why she’s here: her ex-boyfriend Jack Spheer, head of Spheerical Industries, is having a press conference for a new unveiling. Jack sent Lena an invite to attend, but he’s her Kryptonite, and she’s worried to attend alone. Kara jumps right up to support her. As they leave, Lena asks what Kara’s Kryptonite is. See, it’s funny, because it’s Kryptonite.
Samantha:
Jack Spheer comes out on stage and does a Tony Stark presentation. He cuts his hand in front of everyone and then his CFO opens a sphere that releases little tiny robot things that instantly repair the wound. The CFO is wearing a giant, blue earpiece thing that reminds me of the ear pods in Rise of the Cybermen on Doctor Who:
Anyway, the robot swarm thing is called BioMax, and it means no more inoculation against disease, no more anesthesia, no more antibiotics– now nanobots! Everyone claps and Jack opens it up to questions. Everyone yells, including Kara. Jack picks her and she stumbles and gets so embarrassed and awkward that I paused the episode and went to bed. It’s the next day now and I’m eating ice cream so I might be able to power through my second hand embarrassment.
Samantha: Woof. I went to work and came back. Work was the better alternative to this painful scene.
Mari: Kara starts her question about how his research started in Metropolis. Snapper jumps up and starts talking over her? In front of all of these people? Like a dick. Kara asserts herself and finishes her question: if he started research in Metropolis and is launching in National City, is he following FDA regulations for distributing drugs across state lines. Jack calls that an excellent question and says he’d never compromise on FDA regulations.
We cut to after the press conference. Jack finds Lena and greets her warmly. He also jokes about the way Kara grilled him. Lena makes the introduction, calling Kara the best reporter in National City. She laughs awkwardly and then picks up on the strong GO AWAY vibes Lena is sending. Kara excuses herself.
On the way out, a stranger stops Kara and says he’s got some information on Jack. Kara is the only reporter this stranger will trust. He wants to meet that night at a remote location. I’d say something about safety, but she’s Supergirl so she can leave the mace at home.
Jack invites Lena out to dinner. She doesn’t answer and the CFO interrupts to tell Jack to spend some time with the shareholders. Lena takes that as her opportunity to leave.
Remember Guardian? (S: Not really.) He’s out on the mean streets, fighting someone for some reason we’ll never know. After he knocks the nobody out, he returns to the surveillance van only to find Winn and Lyra totally not paying attention. Plus, Lyra knows James is Guardian because she can smell him. (For real.) Winn thought it would be cool to invite his girlfriend into the crime fighting business, but James is annoyed. Winn argues him into it, though.
Kara meets the informant at the rendezvous point. It’s appropriately rainy and lit in a yellow glow. Very noir. Informant reiterates that Kara has to be the one he shares this with because she cares about people, proven by her story about Cadmus. He introduces himself as Joe Watkins. He was a lab technician at Spheerical before he was fired last month. He was archiving files on the mainframe computer when he noticed that the results from the human trials hadn’t been entered.
We cut outside see a bunch of nanobots surrounding the car.
Joe concludes that he thinks the human test trials have been faked and Jack shouldn’t be launching nanobots. Kara hears something, but it’s too late. The car blows up. She makes it out alive, of course, but Joe the Whistleblower does not.
Mari: Sorry, Joe.
The next day, Kara visits James. She wants to file a FOIA with the FDA because of what Joe told her. James says she can do it on her own, but Kara thinks it will be taken more seriously if it comes from CatCo. Snapper walks in to make more misogyny-tinged jokes about bloggers. He also tells James that doing this for Kara would be a conflict of interest and stupid. Kara tells James to just never mind and leaves.
Just outside James’s office, Kara uses her super hearing to hear about Snapper’s lead: someone who participated in the human trials for Spheerical.
L-Corp. Lena hears someone come in, but doesn’t look up. She assumes it’s her assistant Hector, but surprise, it’s Jack. He invites her out to dinner again, but Lena turns him down. Not because she’s mad that he cracked the nano thing alone. She swears it’s not that. He seems to genuinely apologize for not treating her better, and swears he just wants some dinner, and invites her out again.
Guardian is doing his vigilante thing literally no one cares about. The thief he’s apprehending turns out to be just a kid. He eases up, but Lyra shows up to beat the crap out of him anyway. Guardian stops her, tells the kid thief to go, and tells Lyra to get in the van. (S: Girl, what are you doing.)
Snapper visits his informant. Supergirl shows up to spy, but it’s okay because the murderbots are also there, which means her spying turns into a greater good. Except I think the informant gets eaten alive, so it’s just Snapper whose life gets saved. Not the greater good, tbh. (S: These poor randos this episode!)
Super Pad. Kara storms in, mad that two of her sources have been eating alive by murderbots. Mon-El suggests talking to Lena, who called to tell Kara about dinner with Jack, in the hope that Kara would talk her out of it. Kara hands Mon-El his coat and says they are going. Mon-El thinks this feels like stalking. Kara says it’s journalism. Mon-El amends: this is very creepy journalism.
Dinner. Jack is buttering Lena up. Kara and Mon-El show up, loud and embarrassing as they do the whole “omg are you here? So are we, wow” thing. Lena whispers that this save isn’t needed, but Kara says that’s what friends are for and just sits down at the table. Kara has 0 chill and 0 smooth, so she just immediately asks about the nanobots and if he, like, say, tested on any humans or anything. Jack says it’s all public record if she’s curious. Lena jumps in and asks how Jack figured it out. He talks about how one night after Lena left him, he saw some starlings flying, felt sad that he didn’t chase after her, and then figured out that he was modeling the nano swarm after bees (who need a queen) instead of controlling it all from a mainframe inside of Spheerical labs. Jack says he would’ve never figured it out if he hadn’t been thinking about Lena.
Kara is like ANYWAY and starts to ask another question, but Jack is over it. He’s still making googly eyes at Lena, who is making sexy eyes back at him. (S: Katie McGrath gives good sexy eyes.) Mon-El says they should go, but goes in for a hug when Jack goes in for a handshake. An extended hug. As he walks out with Kara, Mon-El reveals that he stole the security badge Jack was for some reason carrying that Mon-El somehow knew he had.
Later at L-Corp, Jack and Lena are still flirting and getting their relationship chat on. I don’t care. They kiss.
Kara and Mon-El are being very bad at sneaking around Spheerical. Also this seems inefficient for two super powered beings, but okay. Kara guesses this tech genius’s password in one go: starling.
Samantha: Hahahahah, oh my god so he’s just a swarm of bot bees in a coat, hahahaha.
Mari: At L-Corp, Nano Jack feels the thumb drive. Honestly, he does. He looks pained and makes a bad excuse for leaving Lena mid-kiss.
Mon-El hears something swarming and Kara tells him to run. Not like super run or anything. Just a regular trot out of the office. Jack nano swarms into his office, but they are gone.
Kara goes to visit Lena the next day and breaks the news that her maybe boyfriend is covering up something dangerous. Lena doesn’t believe it, but Kara has the video to prove it. Lena asks Kara to keep it quiet until she can confront Jack about it. Kara doesn’t think that’s a good idea since, you know, he’s a swarm of murder bots pretending to be a person or whatever. Lena promises she won’t confront Jack, but I don’t believe her. She also looks like she wants to murder Kara.
Alien Bar. Winn has bought Lyra dessert and drinks to break the news that she’s out of the super squad for being overly violent. She erupts in anger, breaks things, and yells for Winn to get out.
CatCo. Kara hands all her research on Spheerical over to Snapper and also apologizes for disobeying him on the Cadmus thing. Booooooooo. He accepts her apology, in his way, and they compare research notes. Snapper shares that Jack is probably not the only one involved in the cover up: the CFO stands to lose a lot of money if Spheerical goes down.
Dark lab, because idk, evil reasons. Dear god, Lena came to confront Jack. I am shock. He claims to have no idea what Lena is even talking about, with her claims of murderbots and killing people. Lena can see that he is telling the truth. And then we hear a beep and swarm Jack powers down. Behind him is the CFO with her glowy ear pod, ready to do her villain confession: Jack wanted to scrap Biomax because its side effect is that it removes free will. Thankfully she was there to mind control him and full steam ahead.
Supergirl busts in the room and saves Lena. Swarm Jack breaks up into all his nano bot parts. Supergirl tells Lena to run, but she’s got a better idea. She tells Supergirl to distract the bots. Supergirl starts flying and the bots chase her. Lena goes for CFO who punches and gloats that she’s a black belt. Lena punches her back and says she’s a Luthor. She knocks her out with another punch.
Lena destroys the ear pod, but the nano bots have managed to pin Supergirl and are swarming slowly and dramatically all over her body. Very slowly. Jack is glitching and crying out in pain. Lena tries to override the mainframe, but CFO comes to and says that doing that will kill Jack. Lena elbows her because we all needed her to shut up.
Lena tearfully apologizes to Jack, but he tells her to do it. Lena overrides the system and all the nano bots go away, or whatever. Jack dies. (S: Byyyeeee!)
After a not!break, Kara visits Lena with flowers and a wish that she could do more. Lena says she feels cold and calm until she thinks about CFO dying in jail and then she feels warm for a minute. It’s scaring her about the person she might be. Kara comforts her and promises to always be her friend and never go anywhere and always protect her. Kiss already. (S: Please.)
Winn is being an idiot in the Guardian Van and giving James bogus work. James apologizes for not handling the Lyra thing better. He gets sappy about Winn being his best friend and his brother, like Clark used to be. And then he reveals that he invited Lyra back and all of this is stupid because we watched Winn and Lyra both throw tantrums and still get their way. They deserve each other. (S: What the hell even.)
CatCo. Kara brings Snapper baked goods and he shows her that her name is in the byline of the Spheerical article. He compliments her on her good job and pursuit of the truth but not on her nasty baked goods. She has her job back.
L-Corp. Teri Hatcher visits Lena and the music gets all dun-dun-dun-y when she says she’s got a business proposition.
Next time on Supergirl: Alex gets kidnapped in S02 E19 – Alex.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.